Eurovision 2018 🇵🇹 Second Semi Final: facts and numbers on the aftermath

Fotis Konstantopoulos (Greece)

GREECE 🇬🇷 Once again this year the semi final in which the country didn’t participate reached a low TV rating with 7,8% watching the show. Last year 9,3% watched the semi final in which the country didn’t participate.

ESTONIA 🇪🇪 20.8% of the Estonian population watched on Tuesday evening as the first semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2018 took place in Lisbon, Portugal. An average of 253,000 viewers watched on both ETV and ETV+, as Estonia competed for a place in the final of Eurovision 2018.

NORWAY 🇳🇴 Over 1 million viewers tuned in to the second semi-final in Norway, with 71% of viewers watching the show last night on NRK. In total 1,003,000 viewers watched the contest, an increase of 300,000 viewers over the semi-finals last year. The figures for the competition last night mark the largest audience for a semi-final in Norway since the country hosted in 2010.

ITALY 🇮🇹 Despite an increase in viewers compared to the first semi final, the viewing figures in Italy for the contest have taken a 32% decline compared to last year. Last year 589,000 viewers tuned in to the second semi-final, however both semi-finals this year are

MONTENEGRO 🇲🇪 RTCG board before the second semi final became aware of some jokes Vanja did for disabled children. They called for him to step down and withdraw from the show.

ROMANIA 🇷🇴 Romanian national broadcaster claims that Romanian diaspora complaint for voting failure during the second semi final and this is why their country didn’t qualify to the final. Without providing any solid proof of that and with no EBU statement that there was an indication of voting failure in some cases, TVR stated: “During the 15 minutes allocated to the voting session, many Romanians from abroad complained of technical failures to the telephone system. Messages, sent through social networks, came from countries with large Romanian communities, such as Germany and Italy, where telephone operators had issues with allowing people to vote our representatives (Romania) in the contest. Thus, in Italy, three of the national networks did not operate that night, and in Germany the subscribers of one of the major telephone operators were unable to send the votes.” The Humans, although disappointed with the result stated that they are proud they represented their country in the way they did.

RUSSIA 🇷🇺 Yuri Aksyuta, the Russian Head of Delegation spoke to the media after the second semi-final. “I’m very sorry for Julia, and I’m afraid that it will not be easy for her now. As soon as we finish talking with you, I’ll come to her and try to calm her down. I’ll say that she has absolutely nothing to blame for, she did everything she could do.”

CZECH REPUBLIC 🇨🇿 Just 70,000 viewers on average watched the second semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest on CT2 last night. The contest which was in competition with an ice hockey match between the Czech Republic and Russia which drew in over 1.6 million viewers. This years contest has continued to record its lowest viewing figures for the Eurovision Song Contest since their return in 2015.

FRANCE 🇫🇷 The second semi-final of Eurovision 2018 received the highest viewing figures to date for a semi-final broadcast in France. A total of 724,000 viewers watched on France 4, as eighteen more songs took the stage and France made their guest appearance in the show. The show was the the third most watched broadcast during the time slot, receiving a viewing share of 3.5%.

SPAIN 🇪🇸 The show was broadcast by TVE through their secondary channels La 2 and La 2 HD. These figures mean they lost 222,000 viewers compared to the first semi final on Tuesday. However this is still a big improvement on the programming on the same slot the previous week which only had 189,000 views.